For many years, vaccination and administration of medicine has been accomplished by using syringes and needles. However, use of syringes and needles increases the risk of disease transmission among injection recipients. In addition, syringes and needles may cause tissue damage at the site of injection, thereby creating lesions and scar tissue. Particularly with the use of needle injection of animals, injection site lesions may result in losses of tens of millions of dollars each year to meat producers from reduced grade and carcass trim. Further, during injection needle tips may break causing residual needle fragments to remain in the subject. With animal use, this may further result in needle fragments entering into the food system. Disposable needles and syringes also create hazardous medical waste and waste disposal problems. A further drawback to disposable syringes and needles are the high costs when the units are provided for worldwide use. Many subjects, whether human or animal, have a strong aversion to needle injection. Accordingly, there exists a need for alternative methods of delivering medication to patients.
Alternative methods of delivering medication have been developed. One known method is to deliver medication using a needle-free injector. A needle-free injector delivers medication by providing a strong, high pressure blast of the medication through a small orifice, which causes a minute stream of the medication to exit the orifice at a high rate of speed, thereby allowing the medication to penetrate into the skin and subcutaneous tissues. A substantial amount of pressure is needed to create a high rate of speed of the medication. As a result, needle-free injectors are typically bulky and cumbersome to use. Further, accidental firing of the injector may cause misdosing of subjects and loss of medicine.
There is a need in the world health industry for a safe, economical, high work-load injection system to prevent and eradicate certain diseases in animals and humans.